LEGO

I've always loved LEGO. I think it because it is mutability without
risk. Creativity with undo. You can try things out and if it doesn't
work out, you can always start over. I think my love for LEGO and
computer programming are very intertwined as to me software is like
having an nearly limitless number of bricks I can combine to build
something abstractly without three-dimensional limits. In these
respects software is even better than LEGO but LEGO came first and
will always have a special place in my heart.

I got my first lego set,
the #115 LEGO Building Set,
when I was three, as described over on my
personal history page. It was
always a fun activity to do with my father. I think he was into it as
much as I was when it came to what is now referred to as Technic lego.
He got me the #952 Farm
Tractor Expert Builder set for 9-14 year olds for Christmas in
1981 when I was 8. I remember spending Christmas 1983 learning about
putting together #8860 Car
Chassis which provided the raw materials for many other creations.

Many of these later creations would be for science fair
and Science Olympiad projects
using the LEGO, often in conjunction with his own childhood Erector
sets. In Maryland, we built an autopilot mechanism that tried to keep
a metal ball balanced on a tilting track. In middle school, we build a
computer controlled elevator. By printing characters to the parallel
port of our Seequa Chameleon
connected to a wirewrapped digital logic board we could command our
lego elevator to move to any floor, where it would stop on the righr
floor based on feedback from a photoresistor. In high school we built
a car for a Science Olympiad competition powered by the energy of a
falling brick. Later in January 1994 I would go on to compete, without
my father but instead with my friend Marisa Culmone, in the
MIT 6.270 Robo-raiders LEGO
Robot competition.

Occasionally I've made attempts to inventory my LEGO, first with some
simple text file inventories, but when my mom shipped by childhood
sets in late 2007, I decided to get more serious and write a computer
program to track and visual the sets, connecting with various web data
sources for information and instructions. It was from this I learned
that I actually have more than 100,000 pieces of LEGO in my house:

While there was consistent growth through my elementary school
years, things tapered off during middle school (1985-1987), and then
was flat during high school (1987-1991) when my non-Technic sets were
in storage after moving houses. During college (1991-1995) my only new
LEGO was from the 6.270 competition, the 9-volt train sets shown in
the graph were released during this time but not purchased by me until
much later. In the years immediately after college (1995-1999) my
childhood sets were still in my parents house and I started over with
some new sets received as gifts from my MIT friends.

#7140 X-Wing Fighter: One of the first LEGO Star Wars setsImage from BricklinkSee also my LEGO inventory page.

Then in 1999 something big changed: the LEGO Star Wars sets were
released. I was a Star Wars fan as a kid, having seen the original
movie at a drive-in theater in Arkansas when just was barely five. I
saw Empire was the first movie I saw in the theater twice when I was
seven. I had a few action figures and one ship, the Millenium Falcon,
but that wasn't enough for staging space battles. I used to try and
create various sci-fi space ships with my LEGO as a kid, but now they
were going to make official sets! So I bought them and not having a
lot of room at home I used them to decorate my Ariba office on
Charleston Road. However with the number of LEGO Star Wars sets
growing beyond the capacity of my office, I was fortunate to have a
new house with room for my sets in early 2000.

The last few years the number of LEGO pieces has been accelerating
again. One reason is a series of sets breaking the record for the
number of pieces starting with the
#10030 Imperial Star
Destroyer, the slightly
disappointing #10143 Death
Star II, and finally my favorite the
#10179 Millennium
Falcon. However the main reason is because my kids have
successivley entered their DUPLO and LEGO years, now joined with my
own childhood sets. In some respects, the LEGO world is very
different, with heavily themed sets
including
Dora,
Thomas & Friends,
Bob the Builder,
Star Wars,
Indiana Jones,
SpongeBob,
but I always try to get some generic construction sets to have raw
material for their own creations.